Retractable lighting systems, particularly landscape lights, are known in the art as can be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,628,558 to Iacono and 5,683,176 to Clendenin. These two patents disclose pneumatically operated devices which have an inner housing sliding within an outer housing. In pneumatically operated devices, O-rings are typically used to minimize airflow between the inner and outer housings. O-ring seals have the disadvantage of adding frictional resistance to the sliding action between the two housings. Additionally, O-ring seals must be kept fee of dirt and grit or they tend to fail prematurely. Of course, landscape lights being buried in the ground are subject to extremely dirty and gritty conditions, especially when combined with periodic rain. Moreover, since landscape lights may be installed in low areas, it is quite possible that they will at times be submerged during heavy rainfalls. Given these circumstances, there exists a need for improvements to the various prior art retractable lighting systems.